


Red Letter Day

by Care



Category: How I Met Your Mother, The Office (US)
Genre: Community: festschrift, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-09
Updated: 2013-06-09
Packaged: 2017-12-14 11:25:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/836370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Care/pseuds/Care
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Pam does what she wants, moves to New York, and ends up living in Robin Scherbatsky's spare bedroom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Letter Day

**Author's Note:**

> [Originally written for Festschrift, and published on Livejournal in April 2008.](http://care-says.livejournal.com/15735.html)
> 
> Betaed by chibirhm, many thanks. All errors are mine. Office AU starting right after Beach Day, S3. Up to before Ten Sessions in HIMYM, S3. So no Stella, basically.

Jim doesn't get the job at Corporate, but they like him enough to give him the regional manager's position in Albany. So he goes and Karen leaves too a little after that, and pretty soon it's just Andy left from the merger and everything kind of goes back to the way it was. Pam spends her time doing the usual – helping Michael with his asinine plans, pulling little pranks on Dwight, looking up other jobs online and fantasizing about moving to San Francisco or Boston or Chicago. It's a little farfetched, but she's looking at these graphic design jobs and thinking about that internship Jan offered her, that maybe she should apply.

She thinks about it all year.

Halfway through the next summer, she really can't stand it anymore. It's the monotony of things – day after day, answering phones and keeping records. She looks up the internship online (since Jan isn't at Corporate anymore), and finds the application form to download. She prints it out and stares at it for a minute, looking at the top where it asks her to attach her résumé to the form. Pam doesn't think she's updated her résumé since junior year of college, but it's saved on her computer anyway. She opens the Word document and clicks around a little, adds a few things to tweak it, like her art class and things.

She's filling out the form when Michael slaps a pile of paperwork on her desk and tries to peer around to see what she's doing. Pam slides it out of his field of vision.

She hears back from Corporate after three weeks, a nice thick package welcoming her to the program. She pours over it sitting on her living room floor, looking through the glossy photo brochures, and the schedule of courses. There's a letter reminding her of the start date and how she needs to find accommodations in the city before then, and Pam carefully chews on her thumbnail thinking it over. She needs to send her acceptance to them two weeks. But…can she really afford staying in the city right now?

At work Pam goes through her address book and makes a few calls to friends from college and high school. She hasn't really talked to anybody since her wedding was called off, but some of them live in New York, and, well, whatever. In college she kind of thought they'd all be in touch forever, but then Kerry moved to Milan and Maggie had her kids and Grace shaved her head and became a performance artist at Berkeley. Life goes on. Becky puts her in touch with her cousin, who gives her the phone number of her ex-boyfriend, who refers her to his grandmother's second husband's grandniece, and finally she gets to this woman named Robin.

Robin seems nice enough over the phone, pretty normal anyway. She's looking for someone to rent out the second bedroom in her apartment in Brooklyn. The commute seems fine to Pam, and the rent's within her affordable range, so the two of them make plans to have Pam come up and see the apartment on Friday.

Driving up to New York makes her happy, the back windows cracked open even though she's on the freeway, and one of her mix CDs blaring from the tinny sound system in her little car. She's supposed to stay with Maggie this weekend, and inside her backpack in the trunk are two wrapped presents for Maggie's girls. Pam's never really made this drive on her own before, so she has to pull over to consult her Mapquest directions a few times. Maggie turns out to live in Jersey, and when she pulls up to the tidy two-story house, her daughters spill out onto the front lawn with a basset hound.

"You can't stay for dinner?" Maggie asks, once they've done the customary hugs and kisses routine.

"Well, it's getting late. I don't think I'm going to see Robin tonight, so I guess so. Just give me one second." Pam pulls out her cell phone and dials Robin Scherbatsky.

"Hey!" Robin says when she picks up. It's loud in the background wherever she is. "Pam? Are you on your way?"

Pam glances over at Maggie. She's hauling Kit, the younger girl, into a high chair. "Um. No. Not quite. Look – I don't think I can make it tonight. Do you have time tomorrow? It's just – I'm staying with a friend in New Jersey and I just got in."

"Oh, that's fine. So, tomorrow – same time?"

"Cool," Pam says, at the same time that Robin yells, "BARNEY!" in a half-amused kind of way on her end. Pam wonders if Barney is some kind of boyfriend. Unfortunate name though. She says goodbye and hangs up.

After dinner, Maggie lets Kit and Anya open their presents from Pam. She gives Anya nontoxic watercolors and some cool markers that change colors. She's six, so she takes to them like a duck to water. Kit's young and mostly interested in tagging along with her sister. Pam gives her a stuffed elephant with a polka-dotted bow and feels a little bit of pride when Kit insists on taking her elephant to bed with her. She says hi to Maggie's husband Tim when he comes home, and retreats to her bedroom for the night.

The next evening Pam's standing in front of a brownstone in Brooklyn, squinting up from the steps to see if she can guess which window is Robin's. She buzzes though, after about five minutes, because she doesn't want the other residents to think she's a psycho serial killer or something.

"Pam?" Robin's voice comes through, fuzzy.

"Yeah, it's me," she answers, and there's that tingle of nervousness that spreads down her spine.

"Come on up!" Robin says and buzzes her in.

Pam walks up three flights of stairs, pauses at the door. She knocks. She isn't really sure about this – it's not official anyway; she hasn't signed any paperwork – and she hasn't even sent in her acceptance to the program. She doesn't have to do this if she doesn't want to. This is just to look. She might hate Robin, which would suck, because she probably wouldn't find a room cheaper then this, but still. It can't hurt.

But once Robin shows her the apartment, and her anxiety gives away to nothing, Pam thinks she can possibly do this after all. Because Robin is really cool and funny and has the best stuff in her apartment. She's quirky and beautiful and makes Pam laugh, telling her about her friends (including aforementioned Barney). Pam falls in love with the little room at the end of Robin's apartment, the soft cream walls and light blue curtains. It even has a double bed already, and a little desk crammed up under the windowsill. Before she knows it, she's saying yes to room, and yes to Robin when she invites Pam out for a drink with her friends.

The whole night at MacLaren's Pam thinks about how Jim would love these people. Marshall and Lily are adorable, completely in love with each other, but it only adds to the group's dynamic. Barney is not Robin's boyfriend (though Pam suspects something), and he only tries to hit on her once before Robin vetoes it. Ted is sweet. Really sweet. Sweet and funny and kind of lame in an adorable boy way. Pam thinks how she's forgotten how boys get – it's been so long since she's dated seriously anyway. But she likes them. All of them.

When she gets home, she sends her acceptance in.

**

Her dad drives up with her to New York. They rent a U-Haul and listen to the oldies. Pam thinks about her paintings stacked in the back, wrapped carefully to keep them from ripping. She thinks about wanting to succeed in the program, about the city. She's never lived outside Scranton before. She almost went abroad her junior year in college to England though, but Roy hadn't wanted her to be far away. Pam regrets it now, but there isn't anything she can do anymore.

Robin's there to help them move Pam's stuff, and when she sees the heavier things Pam's brought, she calls up Ted and Marshall and Barney, and of course Lily comes too. The boys heave and grunt and protest as Robin saddles them with stuff to carry up the stairs, and Lily pours over Pam's paintings and the two of them start talking about technique when they're supposed to be moving boxes.

"Bunny, I think you're going to be happy here," Pam's dad says when the U-Haul's empty and she's treating him to an iced coffee down the street. He gives her a kiss on the forehead and says goodbye. It feels like when he moved her to college and her mom cried, and her brother Rob teased her about getting old. Except that her mom's back home, probably gardening, and Rob's moved to Philly with his wife and kids.

Everybody else is still at Robin's when she comes up the stairs, hair frizzing out more than usual, and her whole body damp with sweat. Lily throws her arms around her when Pam comes inside. "We're so excited you decided to move in!" she exclaims, while Marshall nods agreement.

Pam laughs, kind of embarrassed, but definitely pleased. "Thanks. I'm excited too."

Ted's a little quieter, but he comes up and gives her a hug too, and Pam lets him even though her body wants to shy away because she's too gross right now. "You're going to be a regular at MacLaren's now, okay?"

"With us, of course," Barney cuts in. "How are your wingman skills, Beesly?"

And it's weird because only Jim called her that. She takes a deep breath and smiles at him. "I don't know. I've never been a wingman before. But I can learn."

"That's what I like to hear!" Barney says and claps her on the back. They all cheer and make plans to meet up for later, after she unpacks a little and showers.

**

She's been in the program for barely a month when she knows this is what she wants to do. Definitely. Her teachers say she's doing really well, and they're helping her put together a portfolio. She can even keep working for Dunder-Mifflin if she wants. Ryan's apparently looking for someone to help up with the new website logo design. When Pam tells the rest of the gang this, they all hold up their beers and toast her. It's good to have friends, she thinks, supportive, constant friends. She even snags Barney a girl.

She goes over to Ted and Marshall's (and technically Lily's) after work one day, letting herself in without thinking about it as everyone does. Ted's sitting on the couch, reading the paper with the TV on. No one else is home, which is kind of weird since she's never been alone with Ted, but whatever. Pam flops down on the couch next to him and snags the comics from the pile he hasn't read yet.

"Hey!" Ted protests. Her head jerks up, but he's grinning. "Paper thief."

"Everybody knows you read the comics first," she teases.

"Everybody that's what – five?" he teases back.

And then they're bantering back and forth, which is weird too, but not in a bad way, and her chest loosens up. Pam keeps stealing sections of the paper from Ted and he takes them back when she gets distracted by the TV. When she gets up to get a glass of water, he takes the entire stack back.

"Hey," she says, peering from the kitchen.

"Hey what?"

"Hey, what's the Slutty Pumpkin?" Pam gestures to the fridge, where there's an index card stuck to the door.

Ted kind of laughs. "That's a long story."

"Well, I have time," she says, thinking that she likes the way he laughs when he's embarrassed.

"Then come sit and I'll tell you," Ted leans back into the couch.

Three hours later, he's telling her about the butterfly tattoo and she's laughing harder than she has in a long, long time. She tells him about Dwight and his beet farm, about Michael and the coalwalk and things about Scranton that she thinks about sometimes. Ted wants to visit.

It's nice.

**

They all go out to dinner when Pam finishes the program. She was worried at first, wondering if she would have to relocate again, but Dunder-Mifflin hires her to be part of their graphics department in the city and then she's just relieved all over. It pays much, much more then her receptionist job, and even though Michael calls her weeping, Pam's happy. She's really, really happy.

"Guys, here's to Pam!" Ted says, standing up at the table.

She can feel herself turning red and hides her face with her napkin when they all follow suit. "To Pam!"

"Don't ever leave us, okay?" Barney says, wagging a finger at her. "You're not allowed."

"Yeah, Barney would cry," Lily giggles.

"I would not!" Barney insists.

"For me, Barney?" Pam says.

He glances at her and makes a face. "Alright, maybe. But that's not a definite answer, Beesly. Don't try me!"

Marshall takes out the wrapped present from the gift bag he's had under his chair all night. "Here, this is from all of us."

Pam tears up a little and carefully opens each corner of the package – it's flat and rectangular. She gasps a little when the paper comes apart in her hands. They've framed one of her watercolors, the one of the view from the rooftop of Ted and Marshall's building against the sunset. The frame's beautiful and perfect; the whole thing is. And folded underneath the frame is a letter from all of them, congratulating her.

"You guys," she says, struggling to find the words as she starts crying. "You guys, it's amazing."

"It was Ted's idea," Robin says, sipping her wine. "He picked the painting."

Ted shrugs his shoulders and looks down at his plate. He glances at Pam briefly. She leans over her seat and throws her arms around his neck, planting a sopping kiss against his cheek. When she pulls away he's blushing.

"It was nothing. You just needed something to commemorate the occasion," he says.

" _Thank_ you," Pam says, and she feels like she can't stop crying and laughing and loving them all at the same time.

**

The whole summer is pretty amazing. Ted takes her to all these free outdoors concerts in the park. She gets used to sitting with him on a ratty blanket, eating out of plastic cartons they've packed. He surprises her one day and takes her to the MoMA. Pam walks around the place, staring at sculptures and paintings and tries to understand each artist's perspective while Ted tells her as much as he knows. She goes again with Lily later and gets a lot more out of it, but it was nice to go with Ted too.

Sometimes she thinks about maybe the two of the will end up together and that would be something, wouldn't it? He doesn't really date that summer anyway and maybe it's because they're single and together a lot. Well, Robin's single too and Barney, but Pam's always thought that they'd be better together and it's not like she's attracted to Barney, so.

Right now she's just happy to listen to live jazz with Ted, eating their ice cream cones.

**

At the end of September Marshall and Lily move into their slanted apartment. They all help, though the boys mostly help by playing roller luge. Pam and Robin help nail the furniture into the floor, and the whole day is filled with the sound of hammers banging.

"Is this really necessary?" Ted asks, with his mouth half full of nails. He smacks his index finger and lets out a howl, the nails spilling to the floor and rolling towards the door.

" _Ted_ ," Lily admonishes, "I don't want to wake up in the middle of the night and find that our bed has slid three feet across the floor, okay?"

"I liked it better when the apartment was haunted," Marshall grumbles.

"No, NO!" Lily yells. "We are going to be happy here. We _are_ going to be happy here."

Robin rushes to reassure her. "Yes, you will. You two will be very happy here."

Pam shrugs. "I think the crookedness gives the apartment character."

"Yeah," Barney says from where he's positioning himself on the skateboard. "Character."

"It's going to be great, guys. Your kids are going to be really happy here," Pam tells them, and Lily gives her a tired smile and Marshall kind of grins and pulls Lily into him and the two of them kiss. It makes Pam kind of miss that, being part a couple. The familiarity of it all. They're almost like Roy and her – except successful.

By the time they finish, they've gotten the major pieces of furniture nailed down and the kitchen stuff is unpacked. Pam's not sure how they're going to deal with the whole chair issue, but it doesn't come up quite yet and, well, she doesn't really want to bring it up anyway. They order Thai food from a little place around the corner and eat it sitting on the floor next to the couch. Barney chases a spring roll he drops with chopsticks, and they all laugh watching him get bits of carrot over the floorboards. Ted gives her his last shrimp from his Pad Thai and she shares her curry with him.

And then they just talk, and it turns out that Ted's unsure of what to do with Marshall's room, and Pam's been looking for a place that's a little bit bigger anyway, and soon they're making plans for Pam to move out of Robin's and into Ted's. She wonders if that's weird, but nobody else seems to think it is, and she stops worrying about it. He's Ted. Like that's going to happen.

**

Except that it does.

**

A week after Pam moves in, the two of them go out for a burger and a movie. They invite everybody else, but no one joins them, and it's fun anyway. It's not the same as it was with Jim, but she thinks about that less and less every day. Ted puts his arm around her during the movie, and by the end she finds herself curled against his side, her head against his shoulder. He smells clean – like soap and detergent and a little bit like the cheeseburger he ate. She looks up at him and then he looks down at her and they're kissing, with the lights coming up in the theater and everything, and everyone's clapping at the movie and his lips are soft.

They break apart and move back in and their noses bump. She laughs.

"This is a good thing, right?" Ted asks, sounding a little unsure as he presses his forehead against hers.

"I think so," Pam answers, and yeah, she thinks it is.

"Okay. Well. I guess this is the part when I walk you home," he says, raising his eyebrows exaggeratedly.

She laughs again. "Yeah, sure" and picks up her purse.

They kiss again at the front door, with him fumbling with the key in the lock, and her with one of her arms slung around his neck. He slides his fingers into her hair.

"This isn't why I wanted you to move in," Ted tells her when they fall onto the couch. She has a hand under his t-shirt and she can feel the muscles of his diaphragm jump beneath her palm.

She kisses him quickly. "I know."

"I don't - I don't want this to be too much for you," he says.

"It's not," Pam assures him. His eyes are bright in the dark. "Ted, it's not."

And then it's just a matter of figuring out each other, exploring and kissing and touching. Their limbs tangle together on the couch, and once or twice they almost fall off, but then it's okay.

"I'm really glad you moved to New York," Ted says after. She's curled up on his chest, sleepy.

"I'm happy about that every day."

**

It surprises her how good they are together. Ted buys the groceries and they both do the cooking. In the mornings she wakes up with him spooned around her, snoring lightly into her ear. They turn her room into a painting studio, setting it up with an easel and her paints and canvases. They explore all the little eateries around the neighborhood, branching out further and further each weekend. Pam finds a book club and joins it with Lily and Robin, and then Marshall joins too after he finds out they're reading Dracula. She surprises Ted with a little picnic on the roof when they find out he's designing another building. He buys her the best dinner of her life when she tells him she's been promoted.

Barney and Robin get together a year later, and then it's like neither of them have ever been apart from the other. They're so comfortable together that it seems like they've been together forever. Robin moves out of the apartment in Brooklyn and then it's like a chapter of Pam's life is closing. She goes with Robin to say goodbye to the apartment – the very first place she stayed when she moved to New York. It seems important anyway. She stands in that little back room with the furniture stuffed in and thinks about how she loved it.

**

Pam runs into Jim one afternoon when she and Ted are in the supermarket. They're comparing two brands of pasta sauce when another shopping cart bumps into theirs and she reaches out her hand to steady it. She doesn't look up right away, not until she hears him say her name, and then it's like her whole brain freezes and she can't breathe anymore. He looks a little older, but his hair is still messy and his shirtsleeves rolled up. He's alone, which is strange, because she's always pictured him with Karen. Maybe not.

"Jim," she says, voice kind of funny. She feels Ted sliding his hand into hers.

"Hey – uh." Jim looks at her and then at Ted. Then at their hands. "Hey."

Pam remembers suddenly. "Oh – this is Ted. Ted, Jim."

"Your friend from Scranton, right?" Ted says, except he knows exactly what Jim was and it wasn't just a friend from Scranton. He reaches out his free hand to shake Jim's. She can tell he's annoyed.

"That's right. Friend from Scranton," Jim echoes. He turns back to Pam. "I heard you were in the city from Ryan. He said you work for their graphics department now. That's…awesome, Pam."

Ted squeezes her hand.

"Yeah, it's great. I'm really loving it," she says. "How are you? Still at Albany?"

"Nah," Jim shrugs. "I work for Staples now. They moved me here."

"Wow," Pam says. This surprises her for some reason. "The enemy."

Jim smiles a little, guilty. "Yeah."

"Well, hey – it was good to see you. Maybe we'll run into each other again sometime." And she doesn't feel that bad anymore, not that weird. He's just…Jim. Friend from Scranton.

But afterwards she and Ted get into a terrible fight and they yell at each other from across the room.

"Well, I know I can't measure up to _Jim_ , but you could have remembered that I'm your _boyfriend_!" he bellows at her, standing by his desk.

"Fuck you, Ted!" she screams back. "I haven't seen him in two years! And it's not like I planned it! You're acting like I went home with him in front of you!"

"I'm sorry we're not epic like you and Jim! Maybe you'd rather have that story? I mean, you didn't get married because of him! Why don't you just go off with _Jim_?!"

"Because," she snarls, "I love _you_."

And suddenly they're kissing again and his mouth is rough against hers and he's pinning her against the front door.

"I love you," Ted says into her ear, like a litany. "I love you, I love you, I love you."

They have really good make-up sex.

**

And then another year goes by and it's like she's never lived anywhere else. Marshall and Lily announce that they're having a baby and there's lots of squealing. Barney laments that this is the end of the group, but everybody else just ignores him. Robin's excited to be an aunt and once Ted reminds Barney that he'll be an uncle, he cheers right back up and tells Lily that he'll teach the kid all he knows. The look of horror on Lily's face makes Ted and Pam laugh for a long time afterwards. And Pam wonders that year. She wonders about Ted, about being in love. It's like being anchored in another person, a kind of perfect harmony. And then she wonders if they're going to get married and the thought makes her happy inside.

"Hey – " she says after they have dinner one night. "Let's get married."

Ted kind of chokes on his chicken and has to cough a few times. "What?"

"Let's get married," Pam repeats, now a little unsure of herself. "I mean, we've talked about it before. Hypothetically. I just thought – you know – I want to."

He reaches into his pants pocket and pulls out a little ring box, opening it to reveal the engagement ring inside. The diamond catches the light and sparkles. "You beat me to the punch. I was waiting for right time."

"Any time was right. I love you," Pam says, and she's grinning so hard she thinks her face is going to explode, and the best part is that when she looks at Ted, he looks like he's going to do the same thing.

The ring fits. They kiss.

**

They get married in Scranton, in the church where Pam grew up. It's an October wedding. She invites all her old colleagues, and it makes her smile when Dwight shows up in his tux with his spud-gun. She's happy to see everybody though, from Stanley to Meredith to Angela even and Kelly. Pam warns Ted, but even so he's not quite prepared for Michael making a speech at the reception that alludes to both Pam's breasts and her time as a receptionist at Dunder-Mifflin. She sees Jim laughing with his date and they both smile at each other from across the hall. Pam and Ted hold hands under the table the entire time they're sitting. He can't stop kissing her and she can't stop smiling. Her mom cries. So does Kelly, Lily, and Robin. And Marshall. When he wasn't trying to stop baby Cody from pulling on his hair.

She's full and content when they tumble into the back of the car taking them to the airport. They're headed to Hawaii and she's excited for a whole two weeks of relaxing in the sun with Ted. He puts on his sunglasses in the car and she laughs, and Pam just loves loves loves him.

"We're going to have great kids," Ted mumbles sleepily to her once they land.

"Yeah," she agrees, tracing the contours of his face with her finger. She's not quite ready to think about that yet though. She wants them, but not yet. Right now she just wants him.

The night in Hawaii is warm and beautiful. Pam opens the balcony doors in their suite to let the breeze in. Ted wraps his arms around her from the back and they stand there for a long time, just staring outside. She can hear the waves from the beach and when she spins around to kiss Ted, he's there to meet her halfway.


End file.
